It’s War Between Justice Democrats & NewDemPAC

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There is a war going on within the Democratic Party between two factions. It is hard to see it because this war, for the heart and soul of the Democratic Party, is being conducted behind closed doors.

Even as Democrats vote as a block, there are key differences that are beginning to show up with in the Democratic caucus. The most recent was the statement made by freshman Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Cause Action reported:

Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), the unquestioned media superstar of the freshman class, upped the ante, admonishing the moderates and indicating she would help liberal activists unseat them in the 2020 election.

Corbin Trent, a spokesman for Ocasio-Cortez, said she told her colleagues that Democrats who side with Republicans “are putting themselves on a list.” [Emphasis added]

This statement is a declaration of war against any Democrat who sides with the Republicans.

AOC & Justice Democrats

Justice Democrats logo.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a Democratic Socialist. She was supported by the newly formed Justice Democrats.

In my column “How ‘Justice Democrats’ Plan on Taking Total Control of the Their Party” I wrote:

[T]here is a new crop of elected members of Congress who are a clear and present danger to our Constitutional Republican form of government. These newly elected members of the U.S. Congress include: Democrat Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Palestinian Rashida Tlaib and Islamist Ilhan Omar. They call themselves “Justice Democrats.”

Justice Democrats was co-founded on January 23, 2017 by Kyle Kulinski of Secular Talk and Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks. According to Wikipedia:

The organization formed as a result of the 2016 United States presidential election and has a stated goal of reforming the Democratic Party by running “a unified campaign to replace every corporate-backed member of Congress and rebuild the Democratic Party from “scratch” starting in the 2018 congressional midterm elections. [Emphasis added]

According to the Justice Democrats website:

We’re focused on recruiting candidates to run in districts where the incumbent Democrat is demographically and ideologically out-of-touch with the voters of the district.

Who are these Democrats who are siding with Republicans?

In a Greenwich Time article titled “Centrists see a risk in moving to the left” Michael Scherer and Mike DeBonis report:

John Anzalone, an Alabama-based Democratic pollster, said the perception that the [Democratic] party’s primary voters are enthusiastically liberal is not based on data.

“There is, without a doubt, a myth that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez somehow represents the narrative of Democratic primary voters in the country,” Anzalone said. “Almost half of them identify themselves as moderates or conservative.”

That appears to be at least somewhat borne out by the midterms, when less-ideological candidates often won when facing purist opponents. Thirty-three of the 40 GOP seats that Democrats picked up were won by candidates who had been endorsed by the moderate NewDem PAC. [Emphasis added]

Who is NewDemPAC?

According to the NewDemPAC website:

Founded in 1997, the New Democrat Coalition is a solutions-oriented caucus of 101 forward-thinking lawmakers working to bridge the divide between parties and ideologies by challenging the traditional, outmoded approach to governance. New Democrats are leading the way to grow the economy and increase opportunity. In all, New Democrats make up roughly forty percent of the House Democratic Caucus.

Under “Growth” the NewDemPAC website states:

We believe in smart, sensible regulatory policies that make it easier for Americans with ideas to start new businesses, and we do not believe that Democrats should defend old regulations that fail to protect consumers and heap layer after layer of red tape on business owners. We believe in a tax code that everyday Americans can understand – not one that punishes small business owners for trying to make it in America by distorting economic decisions and putting the country at a disadvantage in the race for global prosperity. [Emphasis added]

Sound like President Donald J. Trump doesn’t it?

There is a war brewing in the Democratic Party in 2020. The 2020 election will be a referendum on socialism within the Democratic Party. Let’s see who wins.

RELATED ARTICLE: Who are the ‘Justice Democrats’? AOC a principal in PAC that propelled her to power

13 reasons that “Medicare for All” will fail miserably!

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In an article titled “Beyond ‘Bumper Sticker’ Slogans: 2020 Democrats Debate Details Of Medicare-For-All” Danielle Kurtzleben from National Public Radio reports:

Bernie Sanders is back, but one of his signature policies never left.

In 2015, he introduced Medicare-for-all to many Democrats for the first time. Since Sanders’ first run for president, that type of single-payer health care system has become a mainstream Democratic proposal.

A doctor sent me the below list of reasons why Medicare for All will fail. The original author of the list is unknown.

I am passing it along for others to ponder and discuss. Medicare for All is an initiative of the Democratic Party, who also passed The Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare.

  1. It bans private health insurance, including employer-provided insurance plans.
  2. It will move everyone to Medicare within two years. Obamacare took over three years to launch. When it did, the website crashed. The government will now try and move ten times as many people, in half the time, to Medicare.
  3. It’s “free”! No co-pays, no premiums, no deductibles. But the bill includes no price tag, or any plan to come up with the money. One estimate is $32 trillion over ten years.
  4. It guarantees long-term care — without a plan to pay for it (or anything else).
  5. It eliminates the existing state and federal Obamacare exchanges. On the negative side, this means people will lose the insurance they currently have.
  6. It will cover illegal aliens. It applies to all “residents” of the U.S., and the Secretary of Health and Human Services will decide who qualifies as a “resident.” Anyone who resides (legally or illegally) will be covered!
  7. It covers abortion. The bill will change federal law that currently bans direct funding for abortion which, to Democrats, includes abortion (murder) during birth and (murder) directly after birth.
  8. It bans “experimental” drugs/treatments without special permission from the HHS Secretary. This rule, to keep costs down, results in an end to the “Right to Try”!
  9. It eliminates for-profit medicine. Period. “Medicare for All” believes that profit is evil.
  10. It bans hospitals and doctors from trying to increase revenue. Medicare payments cannot be used for the basic business of running a hospital.
  11. It sets national fees — regardless of local factors like the availability of doctors. Even building or renovating hospitals must be centrally approved.
  12. It prohibits incentives for the best doctors. The bill “prohibits incentive payments, or compensation based on utilization of services or the financial results of any health care provider.” Success, like profit, is bad in a Socialist View.
  13. It punishes doctors for giving special help to individual patients. Doctors will be banned from the system for a year if they make “a private contract with an eligible individual” for services covered by “Medicare for All.”

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is from Wikimedia Commons.

Epic Excuse-Making Follows Near-Fatal Police Shooting By Criminal Alien

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When Napa County Sheriff’s Deputy Riley Jarecki initiated a routine traffic stop earlier this month, she probably did not consider that the refusal of California officials to comply with federal immigration authorities had put her in the direct path of a habitual illegal alien criminal with drug and mental health issues.

But that is what happened on Feb. 17 when Jarecki pulled over Javier Hernandez-Morales, who’d been deported three times since 2011 and had arrests for a range of crimes from multiple counts of driving under the influence, battery on a peace officer, illegal possession of a firearm and violating his probation. And there was an outstanding warrant for his arrest, according to Fox News.

After she approached his car window, the Mexican national fired a gun at Jarecki, who shot back, including at least one fatal gunshot.

“It’s unfortunate that our law enforcement partners and the community are subjected to dangerous consequences because of inflexible state laws that protect criminal aliens,” said ICE spokesman Richard Rocha in a statement.

The incident, Rocha said, could have been prevented had ICE been kept in the loop about Hernandez-Morales’ releases from jail. “This is an impactful, scary example of how public safety is affected by laws or policies limiting local law enforcement agencies’ ability to cooperate with ICE,” he said.

When Hernandez immigration status became known, local officials shifted blame and denied wrongdoing by insisting they were following state law.

“We are in compliance with state law. That is the law of the state of California, and the county intends to comply with state law,” Napa County Supervisor Vallea Ramos told a local CBS News affiliate.

The law in question is SB54, a measure signed in 2017 by former Gov. Jerry Brown and that affords protection to all illegal aliens.

The problem for California politicians and local law enforcement who want to absolve themselves of responsibility is that, according to the Los Angeles Times, three detainers for Hernandez-Morales were issued by ICE to Napa County Jail in 2014, 2015 and 2016; and a further detainer to Sonoma County Jail in 2016.

None were honored and all were issued prior to SB54 going into effect.

The controversial law received warranted criticism in December after Newman (Calif.) Police Cpl. Ronil Singh was killed by an illegal alien who had several drunk driving arrests. Like Hernandez, Singh’s murderer should have been deported years ago.

Perhaps the most outrageous displays of blame-shifting is the op-ed penned by Jodi Hernandez, a relative of Jarecki’s attacker.

Published in the Napa Valley Register, the stunning letter implies that Hernandez was merely a victim of an uncaring system that denied him access to mental health care and did not recognize his humanity.

After apologizing to Deputy Jarecki for being forced into a situation where she had to shoot the suspect, Jodi Hernandez launched an assault of her own against enforcing immigration law.

After noting Javier had worked in the vineyards doing work that “kept the engine that is Napa Valley going,” she asserted that America was “rotting from the inside out.”

She went on. Americans, she wrote, “have lost our ability to relate to the rest of humanity from our place of relative affluence in comparison to the rest of the world” and then she argued the nation “cannot ignore the pain and anguish of an individual and expect to have a safe, strong country.”

Javier Hernandez-Morales was a Mexican national. He was in the U.S. illegally. And he was a habitual criminal with an active arrest warrant. The primary responsibility of officials in California is not to tend to his mental health needs of foreign nationals, but the safety and security of their residents and U.S. citizens.

The thinking of open border policymakers and individuals like Jodi Hernandez is not only foolish, but deadly.

COLUMN BY

avatar

JENNIFER G. HICKEY

Jennifer joined FAIR as Web Content Writer in 2017 and brings to the role extensive communications and media background. She began her career as a policy research analyst on multiple national and state political campaigns before entering journalism. In addition to spending over a decade writing for several broadcast and print news outlets, Jennifer directed communications strategy for a member of Congress and a military nonprofit.

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EDITORS NOTE: This FAIR column with images is republished with permission.

The Heroic Christian Virtue of Cardinal Mindszenty

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Daniel J. Mahoney on a freedom fighter, soon to be made Venerable, who suffered under Nazis and communists and faithfully triumphed over all.

There is not much good news coming out of Rome today. The “Franciscan” Church is marked by immense moral and theological confusion (some of it deliberately sown by the present pontiff) and a tendency to “kneel before the world,” as Jacques Maritain strikingly put it in The Peasant of the Garonne.

But in February came news that ought to warm the hearts of all the faithful and people of good will: Blessed John Henry Newman (one of the outstanding Catholic intellects of all time) is to be canonized, and Joszef Cardinal Mindszenty (1892-1975), one of the anti-totalitarian titans of the twentieth century, has been named “Venerable.”

Others will undoubtedly speak of Newman. I want to concentrate on the almost forgotten greatness and heroism of the former prince-primate of Hungary. Mindszenty, once well known but largely forgotten in the West today, is being honored by the Church for his “heroic Christian virtue” in defending liberty, human dignity, and religious freedom against the totalitarian regimes that subjugated the freedom of east-central Europe during the worst years of the twentieth century.

The recent announcement sent me back to Mindszenty’s Memoirs, begun when he was a “guest” in the American Embassy in Budapest from 1956 to 1971 and later published in many languages, including English, in 1974, the year before his death.

It’s the work of a dedicated Christian and Hungarian patriot, who passionately loved Church and country. He despised totalitarian ideologies, Right and Left alike, which substituted hate for love, atheism and materialism for deference to God, and political servitude for basic human liberties. The prose of his Memoirs is clear and honest and characterized by obvious moral integrity from beginning to end.

Mindszenty was a victim of Bela Kun and his short-lived “Red Terror” in 1919. This was his first arrest by a totalitarian regime. In 1944, he was arrested again, this time by the Arrow Cross government, Hungarian Nazis who despised him and the other Hungarian bishops for condemning the persecution – and deportation – of Hungarian Jews.

Even before the Hungarian communists came into uncontested power in 1947, Mindszenty had fully earned his anti-totalitarian credentials. As the new archbishop of Esztergom, the prince-primate of Hungary (to use a traditional title he insisted on), he had no illusions about Bolshevism, as he called it.


TIME, February 14, 1949: “To die is gain”

Unlike some episcopal colleagues, he did not believe that communists had mellowed or could ever make peace with Christian and democratic principles. Though of simple peasant stock, he was accused of being a reactionary, anti-Semite, and defender of privilege, by everyone from leftist apologists to Eleanor Roosevelt. These “progressives” found little to criticize on the Left, but habitually mistook Christian conservatives for quasi-fascists.

Pope Pius XII spoke for all men of good will when he denounced the Hungarian dictatorship for subjecting Mindszenty “to the worst humiliation,” sentencing him to prison “like a common criminal” after a show trial. Mindszenty had protested the confiscation of religious schools in Hungary and the communist regime’s systematic assault on civil and religious liberty.

In prison, Mindszenty lost nearly half his weight. But he found, like Dostoevsky, that one could remain a “good,” even a “great” man in prison, though assaulted by terrible spiritual temptations.

Mindszenty was freed from prison during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and became one of its heroes. Premier Imre Nagy declared all the charges against him null and void. The liberated Cardinal spoke magnanimously to the whole Hungarian people in a radio address on November 3, 1956.

He declared his commitment to a constitutional state, humane and peaceful dedication to the Hungarian nation, “private property rightly and justly limited by social interests,” religious freedom and the restoration of the Church’s press and schools (but not its old feudal lands).

His Leftist opponents, and the government of Janos Kadar, which came to power after the suppression of the noble Hungarian Revolution, distorted his moderate and uplifting words beyond all recognition. Some critics on the Left do so even today.

Taking refuge in the American embassy as Soviet troops rolled into Budapest, Mindszenty wrote many letters during the next fifteen years to American Presidents and Secretaries of State.

He denounced the Kadar regime for its repression of political and religious liberty, encouragement of genocidal levels of abortion, and enslavement to the Soviet empire (these letters have been collected in Do Not Forget This Small Honest Nation).

The title comes from Mindszenty’s first letter to President Eisenhower as the Hungarian Freedom Fighters were being gunned down in 1956 by Soviet troops. The letters reveal a conscientious and faithful Catholic and a proud and committed Hungarian patriot who would never compromise with communist ideology.

Forced to leave Hungary in 1971 as a result of pressure from President Nixon and Pope Paul VI, he continued to speak against communist repression as he ministered to Hungarian exile communities in the United States, Western Europe, Australia, and South Africa. In 1973, Paul VI vacated the position of Archbishop of Esztergom leaving Mindszenty in “complete and total exile,” as he put it despondently in the final pages of his Memoirs.

But he is now the hero of the entire Hungarian people (except that tiny rump of intellectuals that despises the 1000-year spiritual legacy from St. Stephan to the present). The world will long remember Mindszenty’s heroic virtue. But who now remembers Cardinal Casaroli, the manipulative Vatican Secretary of State who pursued a naïve and misplaced policy of accommodation (Ostpolitik) with the communist East? And who will remember Cardinal Lekai, Mindszenty’s successor as archbishop, who was essentially a collaborator with an ideological regime that suppressed the Church and basic human liberties?

Let us honor – and remember – Joszef Cardinal Mindszenty for his fidelity to truth, faith, and country during the age of ideology. The Church in its wisdom has deemed this great man worthy of veneration. Many of us – students of Mindszenty and totalitarianism alike – had come to that conclusion a very long time ago. May he soon be declared a saint.

COLUMN BY

Daniel J. Mahoney

Daniel J. Mahoney

Daniel J. Mahoney holds the Augustine Chair in Distinguished Scholarship at Assumption College. He has written extensively on such great opponents of totalitarianism as Raymond Aron and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. His latest book is The Idol of Our Age: How the Religion of Humanity Subverts Christianity.

EDITORS NOTE: This Catholic Thing column with images is republished with permission. © 2019 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own. The featured image is by Wikimedia Commons.

Illegal Aliens Arrested in Workplace Raid Sue Over ‘Rights’

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It’s hard for people who obey and respect the law to keep their heads from exploding in the face of affronts to common sense and the rule of law. Our Corruption Chronicles blog explains the latest abuse of our system:

Represented by an extremist nonprofit that lists conservative organizations on a catalogue of “hate groups,” seven illegal immigrants detained in a workplace raid are suing the federal agents that arrested them, claiming that they were racially profiled for being Latino. In a federal court complaint filed this week by their pro bono attorneys at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the illegal aliens assert that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents violated their Constitutional rights against illegal seizures and to equal protection under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

The raid occurred last spring at a slaughterhouse and meatpacking plant in a small rural town called Bean Station in east Tennessee. Agents from ICE and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) raided the facility as part of a lengthy investigation into the owner’s multi-million-dollar tax evasion and fraud scheme. About 100 illegal aliens were arrested, most of them from Guatemala and Mexico and some had been previously deported from the U.S. more than once. At least 54 people were deported immediately, some were released and others faced federal or state charges, according to a local news report following the seize.

The owner of the business, James Brantley, eventually pled guilty to multiple federal crimes, including tax fraud, wire fraud, and employment of unauthorized illegal aliens. The feds say he avoided paying nearly $1.3 million in taxes by hiring at least 150 illegal aliens and paying them off the books in cash. The scheme began in 1988 and continued through 2018 when he got busted. Brantley had reported to the IRS that he had only 44 wage-earning employees, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ). To avoid Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) tax obligations, unemployment insurance premiums, unemployment tax and workers’ compensation insurance premiums he paid illegal immigrants in cash at a rate of $8-$10 per hour.

The feds said it was a criminal investigation from day one, not simply an immigration enforcement action as many open borders activists alleged. “Tax fraud is an outrage to hard-working Americans directly harmed when criminals cheat their obligation to society by failing to pay their fair share, and the employment of illegal workers also poses a serious threat to public safety as the use of fraudulent identity documents exposes Americans to potential identity theft and other financial harm,” said the special agent from ICE Homeland Security Investigations who led the probe.

Leftist groups went ballistic, asserting that illegal immigrants were victims whose “rights” were violated by the federal government. Outraged, the SPLC called it the largest workplace immigration raid since the George W. Bush administration. “What happened on April 5, 2018 was law enforcement overreach, plain and simple,” said the group’s senior supervising attorney Meredith Stewart. “We, as a nation, have a shared set of ideals, rooted in the Bill of Rights: We have a right to be free of racial profiling and unlawful arrests. If we are not willing to uphold those ideals for everyone in this country, then we are all at risk of losing our rights.” In the complaint, SPLC attorneys write that the federal officers conspired to plan and execute the forceful and prolonged seizure of the meatpacking plant’s Latino workforce solely on the basis of their actual or apparent race or ethnicity.

The defendants are nine ICE agents who are accused of using “brutal and excessive force without any provocation.” They cursed, shoved and punched workers, according to the SPLC complaint. A Tennessee group that’s helping in the case says the lawsuit addresses the brutality the workers faced at the hands of agents. The nonprofit, Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC), claims the workplace raid was an “unconscionable abuse of power” with “human costs.” The SPLC, an Obama-tied leftist group that helped a gunman commit an act of terrorism against a conservative organization, has the lead in the case. A few years ago a gunman received a 25-year prison sentence for carrying out the politically-motivated shooting of the Family Research Council (FRC) headquarters after admitting that he learned about the FRC from the SPLC “hate map.” Prosecutors called it an act of terrorism and recommended a 45-year sentence. 

Cheap labor explains why there is so much resistance to protecting our border.

EDITORS NOTE: This Judicial Watch column with images is republished with permission. The featured image is by Activedia on Pixabay.

Cohen’s Testimony against Trump Was Plainly Unethical

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If you watched the Democrat’s little circus this week in front of the House Oversight Committee, you may have been alternately angered and amused. The Cohen hearing was an echo of the Kavanaugh hearings. It was a blatant misuse of that hallowed room in the Capitol. Here’s what I wrote for Fox News:

Congress and the corrupt Washington Establishment set a new low for abuse of power Wednesday with the testimony of Michael Cohen before the House Oversight and Reform Committee.

As President Trump’s former personal lawyer, Cohen can’t ethically testify to Congress about his interactions with Trump. Cohen knows this. Congress knows this. Special Counsel Robert Mueller knows this.

That the committee hearing took place anyway shows the lawless depth to the partisan Deep State abuse targeting President Trump.

Shameful.

Cohen’s testimony is not credible. He has a demonstrated record of not only lying to Congress, but of violating his ethical duties as a lawyer.

Cohen’s testimony did more than abuse Trump’s rights. Congress benefitted from this abuse and arguably obtained confidential documents belonging to President Trump in violation of its own rules, the president’s rights and the law.

Sure enough, the Democratic-controlled hearing was set up through Clinton, Inc., consigliore Lanny Davis, who is representing Cohen for free.

Judicial Watch uncovered Hillary Clinton emails showing Davis to be her biggest fan.

For example, on October 20, 2010, lawyer Davis wrote Hillary Clinton an email saying: “Thank you H for who you are and what you do,” followed in the exchange by another with “PS. I swear you look younger and better every time I see you, Good night dear Hillary. Lanny.”

So as we witness Cohen – with encouragement from Democrats – trampling over the rights of President Trump, remember this abuse would never have happened without the involvement of Team Clinton.

The Clinton team and Democratic National Committee directly colluded with the Obama Justice Department and FBI to target Donald Trump during the presidential campaign. This led to illicit spying on Trump and his team, an attempted coup by pro-Clinton Deep Staters, and the related appointment of a special counsel to try the further the aim of overthrowing President Trump.

And now the coup effort continues through hearings featuring Cohen this week set up in collusion with Hillary Clinton’s closest associates.

Why would Democrats, who cheered for Cohen to be indicted just a few months ago, now give him a platform to speak to the nation?

The answer is simple: They’re still not over Hillary Clinton losing the 2016 election to Donald Trump.

Michael Cohen is a criminal and Michael Cohen is a political prop. Michael Cohen is the furthest thing from a victim.

At the hearing Wednesday we witnessed history. Unfortunately for the reputation of the House, it is the type of history that will live in infamy. 

We have a federal Freedom of Information Act lawsuit pending for Michael Cohen’s alleged influence peddling and fraud related to his attempts to cash in on his relationship with President Trump. Also, we recently sent an official complaint to the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General (IG) calling for investigations into leaks of information about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. The complaint asks for an investigation of leaks to BuzzFeed suggesting that President Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress.

Neither the abuses of power in an effort to end the Trump presidency, nor Judicial Watch’s relentless legal efforts to expose these abuses to the light of day will end soon.

EDITORS NOTE: This Judicial Watch column with images is republished with permission.

H.R. 8 Votes Reveal Dem House Leadership Values Illegal Aliens over Law-abiding Gun Owners

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The Nancy Pelosi-led House of Representatives passed gun control measures H.R. 8 and H.R. 1112 largely along party lines this week. However, a surprise procedural move by a Republican prior to the passage of H.R. 8 underscored the deep divisions in the Democratic Party along with the depth of the leadership’s deep disdain for gun owners. Moreover, the procedural wrangling around the bill further revealed that gun control efforts are not about confronting criminal conduct involving firearms, but rather about burdening gun owners.

In passing H.R. 8, the House voted to burden law-abiding gun owners by criminalizing the private transfer of firearms, even for temporary transfers and those among friends and extended family. The legislation targets the conduct of law-abiding gun owners, as Department of Justice polling of state and federal inmates shows that a plurality of criminals get their guns from the black market (not including private sales or gun shows).

Just prior to the vote on H.R. 8, Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) made a motion to recommit the legislation to amend it to include a provision that would require the National Instant Criminal Background Check System to notify U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) if an illegal alien attempts to purchase a firearm. Under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(5), it is already a felony for an illegal alien to possess or receive a firearm.

The vote and surrounding furor is instructive in understanding the legislative and political priorities of the Democratic House leadership.

This amendment was aimed at alerting law enforcement to felony conduct among a group championed by Democratic leadership rather than imposing new burdens on law-abiding gun owners, and as such Democratic House leadership vigorously opposed it. Attuned to the terrible optics of voting to attack law-abiding gun owners under the guise of controlling crime while simultaneously appearing to condone obvious felonious conduct brought to the direct attention of the federal government, 26 Democrats defied their leadership and voted in favor of the amendment. The amendment passed 220-209 and subsequently H.R. 8 passed 240-190.

According to reports, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was upset after the successful Republican procedure, targeting Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) with her ire. A reporter for The Hill described the scene, writing,

Wednesday’s drama played out as allied gun control activists from Moms Demand Action and the Brady Campaign sat above in the visitors’ galleries to watch the vote on one of their top priorities…

Pelosi approached Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) with the suggestion that the loss of 26 Democrats on what is typically an easy party-line vote was his responsibility. The confrontation, which took place before a group of members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), angered members of the group, of which Clyburn is a long-standing part.

A Washington Post reporter described Pelosi as “clearly frustrated” after failing to stop the ICE amendment. The paper also described the aftermath of the surprise vote by noting,

finger-pointing began almost immediately in a lengthy floor conference that included the top three Democratic leaders: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (Md.) and Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (S.C.).

Self-described Democratic Socialist and staunch enemy of ICE Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) offered the most outspoken criticism of her Democratic colleagues that voted for the ICE amendment. In a Washington Post article titled, “House Democrats explode in recriminations as liberals lash out at moderates,” Ocasio-Cortez spokesman Corbin Trent was quoted as saying that the freshman congresswoman told her colleagues that those that voted for the amendment “are putting themselves on a list.” Despite claiming that the ICE amendment gave her pause, in the end Ocasio-Cortez’s eagerness to attack gun owners overcame her advocacy for illegal aliens, as she voted to pass the amended H.R. 8.

The message sent by the combination of votes on H.R. 8., and segments of the Democratic caucus’s reaction to them, is clear. Democratic House Leadership believes it is more important to protect illegal aliens from the potential consequences of their felonious conduct than to protect the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding gun owners.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Federal Gun Control is on the Move! Tell Your Senators to Oppose H.R.8, S.42 and H.R. 1112!

Go Figure: Gun Controllers Use Fuzzy Math to Push an Agenda That Doesn’t Add Up

Blast from the Past: Proof Found That Brady Campaign Still Exists!

Grassroots Spotlight: NRA Collegiate Coalition at ECU–Making a Difference on Campus

EDITORS NOTE: This NRA-ILA column with images is republished with permission.

Will Republicans Stand Against Socialism? Watch “Fight On”

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There is growing concern that Republican members of Congress are afraid to confront Socialism. There are those who fear the media, fear being called names like racist, Nazi or Islamophobic. There is concern that Republicans are not speaking out against the greatest threat to our nation and Constitutional Republic – Socialism.

After the national anthem opened CPAC 2019 a five-minute video was played that captures what it is that conservatives are fighting for, and what they are fighting against. The video was so popular that CPAC officials received requests to make it publicly available on YouTube. Watch this CPAC 2019 video titled “Fight On.”

Will Republicans at every level get the message?

EDITORS NOTE: The embedded video is by CPAC. The featured image is by thommas68 on Pixabay.

House Democrats Unveil Plan to Bring Total Government Control Over American Health Care

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Liberal House Democrats just unveiled the Medicare for All Act of 2019, a comprehensive bill to abolish virtually all private health plans—including employer-sponsored coverage—and impose total federal government control over Americans’ health care.

Despite its sweeping and detailed government control, as well as the imposition of huge but unknown costs, the 120-page bill has nonetheless initially attracted 106 Democrat co-sponsors, almost half of all Democrats in the House.

The legislation is profoundly authoritarian.

For example, Section 107 ensures that no American, regardless of their personal wants or medical needs, would be able to enroll in any alternative health plan that “duplicates” the government’s coverage. 

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., the bill’s primary sponsor, is at least open about the bill’s intent: “The Medicare for All bill really makes it clear what we mean by ‘Medicare for All.’  We mean a system where there are no private insurance companies that provide these core comprehensive benefits.”

Under Section 201, Congress would decide the content of the health benefits package, what is and is not to be available in the new government health plan. The bill forbids cost sharing, a statutory prohibition guaranteed to induce demand and hike Americans’ overall health costs. 

Americans would not be able simply to spend their own money for medical care from a doctor of their choice. Personal contracts between doctors and patients outside of the government plan would be tightly restricted. Under Section 301, “ … no charge will be made to any individual for any covered items or services than for payment authorized by this Act.”  

Under Section 303, a provider “ … may not bill or enter into any private contract with any individual eligible for benefits under the Act for any item or service that is a benefit under this Act.”  

Even private contracts for “non-covered” medical services require the doctor to report them to the health and human services secretary. Section 303 also stipulates that a private contract between a doctor and a patient for “covered” services would be permissible if and only if the doctor signs and files the affidavit with the secretary of HHS and refrains from submitting any claim for any person “enrolled under this Act” for two full years.

Altogether, these restrictions, layered atop the prohibition on private insurance coverage, would virtually eliminate private agreements between doctors and patients.

In practice, Americans could spend their own money on their own terms with just the very few doctors who could afford to see cash-paying patients entirely outside the system.  

In most respects, the new House bill is broadly similar to Sen. Bernie Sanders’, I-Vt., bill. Beyond creating a government monopoly of health insurance, it centralizes key health care decisions in the office of the secretary of HHS; establishes a national health budget; and it creates a temporary Medicare-style “public option” (along with subsidies for enrollees) in the moribund Obamacare exchanges. 

Like Sanders’ bill, the House bill would also eliminate Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, the Obamacare exchange plans, and Tricare, the health program for military dependents. All of these beneficiaries would be absorbed into the new government plan; it would not be a matter of personal choice.  

In striking contrast to the earlier version of the House “Medicare for All” bill, the new House bill contains no tax or funding provisions. This is a conspicuous omission. This is especially so because the House sponsors (under Section 204) also incorporate long-term care coverage, including nursing home and community-based care, into the basic benefit package. This coverage would likely be hugely expensive.

Recall that independent analysts from the Mercatus Center and the Urban Institute roughly agree that the true 10-year cost of Sanders’ similar plan would be approximately $32 trillion.

Ken Thorpe of Emory University, formerly an adviser to President Bill Clinton, estimates that the federal taxation needed to finance the Sanders’ plan would amount to an additional 20 percent tax on workers’ income, and more than 7 out of 10 working families would end up paying more for health care than they do today.

The federal spending and taxation needed to fund the new House bill would certainly be larger. Beyond the potential impact of the bill on the nation’s deficits and debt, independent analysts and economists will also focus laser-like on the size and impact of the new federal taxes on individuals and families at various income levels.

Simply taxing “the rich” will not cut it.    

The House co-sponsors of the Medicare for All Act intend a rapid transformation of American health care.

Under Section 106 of the bill, they authorize the completion of this massive disruption of today’s public and private health insurance arrangements within just two years.

In the meantime, analysts at the Congressional Budget Office have a very big job to do.

They need to get on it. Now.

Let the debate begin.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Robert Moffit

Robert Moffit

Robert E. Moffit, Ph.D., a seasoned veteran of more than three decades in Washington policymaking, is a senior fellow in domestic policy studies at The Heritage Foundation.

RELATED ARTICLE: Pence: Democrats Embrace ‘Infanticide and a Culture of Death’

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column with images is republished with permission. The featured image is by Wikimedia Commons.

NEW WEBSITE: Illegal Alien Crime Report

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A reader sent me a link to a blog focusing on illegal alien crimes.

See it by clicking here.

Screenshot (892)
This is a screenshot of a portion of the site’s banner this morning.

Although I do include violent crimes committed by migrants (aka ‘new Americans’) of all sorts here at Frauds and Crooks, this site looks to be a one-stop shop collecting the worst of the worst cases of violence being perpetrated on our country and our people by those who should not be here in the first place!

Yesterday I questioned why the horrific beheading in Seattle never made the news nationally—one more example of why one must read widely on the web to understand what is happening to America.

I think the future of journalism is in the hands of media outlets/blogs on the net, and so, as I have said on many previous occasions, you should be blogging too either on a specific topic that does not get enough attention by the mainstream media, or for a specific location—your town, city, or state!

Imagine if every town or county had a blog or website competing with a local Leftwing small town paper!

EDITORS NOTE: This Frauds, Crooks and Criminals column with images is republished with permission. The featured image is by Wikimedia Commons.

The Trump Cultural Revolution

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When I hear the vicious political discourse and boisterous hyperbole of today, it suggests to me the country is embroiled in a cultural revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen since before the Civil War. One of the basic precepts regarding culture is, in order for a person to function and succeed, he/she must learn to conform to the culture or face rejection. Enter the ultimate outsider to our federal government, Donald Trump, a businessman who has never held political office. It is the very fact he was an outsider that propelled him to the presidency. After all, people had grown weary of “business as usual” in the nation’s capitol by both Republicans and Democrats, and were ready for a change.

As an outsider and businessman more concerned with results, Mr. Trump decided not to adapt to the Washington culture, but deliberately contested it instead, thereby causing friction with both parties. His agenda included overturning a great deal of former President Obama’s policies and treaties. More importantly, he wanted to change the mood and outlook of the country. To the public, this represented a “correction,” to the politicians, it represented heresy and a significant change to the status quo. The big question thereby becomes, was this change necessary? To those who elected Mr. Trump, the unequivocal answer is “Yes”; to everyone else, he is perceived as a genuine threat to their existence, which has triggered an uproar.

Some time ago, I wrote a review of author Mark Leibovich’s book, “This Town.” This was a fascinating description of the power and control of the Washington establishment. As I wrote back then…

“Leibovich reveals the true culture of DC, where an incestuous relationship exists between Government, Journalists, and Lobbyists. All scratch each other’s backs in order to climb their respective totem polls and grab as much money as possible along the way. He paints a picture of unadulterated collusion. He makes it clear Washington exists not to solve the problems of the country but to line the pockets of the residents there.”

“Through the book, Leibovich slips and reveals the Democratic bias of the press. Regardless of President Obama’s problems, he can do no wrong in the eyes of the mainstream media. In their eyes, the president is blameless for everything and genuinely the most brilliant president there has ever been. This is only surpassed by the media’s love affair with the Clintons. For some unknown reason, they are totally in awe of Hillary as well as her husband.”

“If the book teaches us anything, it is that the system is broken and in need of major repair.”

More than anything else, the corruption of the Washington establishment paved the way for Donald Trump’s ascension to the presidency.

The push back to President Trump has been incredible, yet expected. Both political parties could not believe he was elected to the highest office in the land. The media considered him DOA as a candidate and nothing but a joke who could be easily defeated by Her Highness Hillary. They grossly underestimated the dissatisfaction of the American public to the goings-on in Washington. In contrast, Donald Trump didn’t underestimate the people and used this to his advantage. His election left the establishment in shock and awe, thereby creating the push back we’ve been experiencing since Mr. Trump’s election.

To illustrate, consider the substantial body of changes we have observed in just the first two years of Mr. Trump’s presidency, and how our lexicon has changed. It has hardly been “business as usual” since his arrival.

  • We’re now familiar with the concept of the “Deep State,” representing a body of people believed to be involved in the secret manipulation of government. We never heard of this expression prior to President Trump.
  • The terms “resistance” and “obstruction” are now commonly used in Congress to delay and thwart the president’s plans and appointees, such as the recent showdowns over the wall along our southern border.
  • Talks of presidential impeachment have surfaced in both the press and the Congress. The 25th amendment of the Constitution was relatively unknown. Now it is frequently quoted as a means to remove the president.
  • The “Mueller Probe” was initiated in the hopes it would discover the president was working illegally with the Russians in the election. So far, nothing of any substance has surfaced.
  • The term “RINO” was coined to denote “Republicans In Name Only,” meaning moderate Republicans who resist the president’s agenda. There is also the “Never Trump” movement consisting of Republicans dead set against Mr. Trump’s election and policies. It is this latter group that foiled the President’s plans for replacing Obamacare. He could have done much more without such people in the political establishment.
  • The “take a knee” protest in the National Football League caused a furor over the patriotism of the NFL players. Further, snubbing a White House visit upon winning a sports championship came into vogue. Such shenanigans were never considered before.
  • The public now accepts “Fake News” as a valid concept associated with the Main Stream Media, which continues to lose credibility (and subscribers). According to the MSM, President Trump is incompetent and, as such, is incapable of doing anything right, be it large or small.
  • Anti-Trump marches are still popular. We’ve also witnessed the rise of “ANTIFA,” self-proclaimed “Anti-Fascists” who use violence and mayhem as their tactics in demonstrations. We’ve also seen the rise of left-wing organizations, such as the Sunrise Movement, representing young demonstrators supporting such things as the “New Green Deal.” There is also the rise of the “#MeToo Movement” who attempted to disrupt the confirmation hearing of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
  • Free-speech on college campuses is under attack. If a talk does not conform to “political correctness,” the person’s 1st Amendment rights are suspended or assaulted. This has resulted in states writing legislation to overturn this policy.
  • It is not uncommon for social media to censor postings supporting President Trump.
  • Entertainer award ceremonies are now used as a political soap box as opposed to recognizing their craft.
  • Trump supporters are now regularly ridiculed and demeaned in terms of their intelligence and values.
  • Late night television, which used to avoid political subjects, is now dependent on jabs at the president.
  • We have witnessed fraudulent claims of victimization (e.g., Jussie Smollet, Covington Catholic) and false accusations of hate crimes, racism, xenophobia, and homophobia. This is all widely reported by the news media, regardless if it is right or wrong.
  • Anything said or done by the President, be it meaningful or a trifle, results in a Pavlovian protest and lampoon. This includes his family, the Vice President, and his inner circle of advisers. Opponents encourage people to openly harass them in public.
  • President Trump is frequently labeled a “pathological liar,” yet when the establishment is caught spreading falsehoods, “Oops” is the typical response and all is forgiven. Further, the days of respectful debate are long gone, and replaced by hate and yelling.
  • Today, we are witnessing the migration of people away from states controlled by Democrats, such as California and New York, to Republican controlled states, such as Texas and Florida, which are considered economically stable.
  • We are seeing the erosion of history and civics in our classrooms, thereby grooming a generation of people ignorant of how and why government works, thereby making them more manipulative.
  • Democrat candidates for president in 2020 have difficulty demonstrating their accomplishments. Instead of touting policy, they promise a multitude of public freebies and bash the President at every opportunity. Linked to this…
  • We’re witnessing a rise in Socialism in this country as it is perceived as the antithesis of the policies of the Trump administration. Even though Socialism has failed throughout the world, liberals continue to embrace it and vilify anyone opposing it.

Gee, have I missed anything?

Does this sound like a culture embracing Mr. Trump or stubbornly rejecting him? Such fierce refutation of the President denotes the severity of cultural change. It also appears to be orchestrated. Whereas the country was rapidly moving towards a liberal agenda under former President Obama, President Trump has changed the course of the country by 180 degrees, hence the push back.

Within any culture, a person must observe the rules of morality, protocol, and socialization. To change the culture, you must address all three areas, which is what the president has been doing since his inauguration.

  • In terms of morality, he has embraced God (and refuses to apologize for it), believes in the rule of law (particularly in the areas of immigration, and law and order), he is pro-life, supports charitable organizations (especially those for children), and believes in the dignity of work as it is important to the well-being of humans, both financially and mentally.
  • In terms of protocol, President Trump has let the world know, under no uncertain terms, it is no longer business as usual, that important treaties have to be renegotiated, he has re-appraised our allies and enemies, and spurns the culture of political correctness.
  • In terms of socialization, he has assumed a brash, unapologetic tone, and is unafraid to push back against his opponents, particularly the main stream media, which other presidents have been afraid to do. He has effectively used social media to perform an end-run around the press and get his message directly to the public, without the media’s filtering, something no other president has had the luxury of doing.

In other words, he has been bucking the establishment as described in Leibovich’s book.

President Trump has embraced the 3-Cs, Christianity, Capitalism, and Conservative values, all of which causes the news media and Democrats to panic, as well as a few Republicans. Yet, he perseveres. To change the culture of the country, he must remain steadfast and resolute, in spite of constant criticisms and resistance. This is something he became adept at as a successful businessman. He is fully cognizant success depends on “winning,” which explains why he has been pushing hard on economic initiatives, trade, peace, and safety of the country. This is not so much about creating a “Win-Lose” scenario (whereby in order for one to win, the other party must lose), as much as it is about changing the culture to “Win-Win” whereby the secret to success is getting people to take pride in their country, themselves, work together and thwart those who would undermine this extraordinary country as devised by our founding fathers. By doing so, he hopes to restore a sense of patriotism, citizenship, work ethic, and family values.

Yes, President Trump understands this is a cultural revolution we are embroiled in. He has seen it before in business on a smaller scale and understands it is difficult to change it, but he also understands the virtue of having everyone pulling on the same oar. He may have a few scars on him before he is finished, but he is unafraid to lead us into this brave new world. If he was to quit, the status quo wins and the establishment continues unabated.

Had the Democrat candidate won in 2016, there would not be the brouhaha we are experiencing today. Had any other Republican won the candidacy, most of whom were politicians, there would have likely been a cultural revolution, but not to the degree we are embroiled in now as Mr. Trump is the outsider and willing to push back against his opponents.

One last note, the 2020 election will tell us the effect of changing the nation’s culture. If President Trump wins, we know he is being successful, but if he is defeated, the Washington establishment will return to normal and the status quo has won. This will also affect the 2024 election in terms of electing Mr. Trump’s successor. Our support for President Trump will be measured by whether we want to see the culture of the country return to a liberal agenda, or if we favor a return to traditional conservative values.

Stay tuned.

Keep the Faith!

EDITORS NOTE: This Bryce Is Right column with images is republished with permission. All trademarks both marked and unmarked belong to their respective companies. The featured image of a build the wall rally in The Villages, Florida is by Wikimedia Commons.

‘Put Socialism on Trial,’ Larry Kudlow Urges

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Larry Kudlow, director of the president’s National Economic Council, called Thursday for putting socialism “on trial”—and convicting it. 

“I want you, and everybody in this room and your friends and your neighbors, I want you to put socialism on trial, that’s what I’m asking,” Kudlow said, speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference just outside Washington.

“I don’t want us to stand idly by,” he told the CPAC audience. “I don’t want to let this stuff fester. I want it challenged. I want it debated. I want it rebutted. I want to convict socialism.” 

The top economic adviser to President Donald Trump noted the emergence of support for socialism among young voters and among Democrats in Congress. 

He singled out the so-called Green New Deal, a proposal backed by congressional Democrats in the form of a resolution sponsored by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass. 

The Democrats’ plan would move the country away from fossil fuels while implementing a raft of liberal initiatives. 

Kudlow called the proposal “central planning on a grand scale.” 

“The Green New Deal would literally destroy the economy. Literally,” Kudlow said. “It would knock out energy, transportation, airlines, jobs, business. We’d probably lose 10 to 15 percent of our GDP. That’s remarkable. But that’s what our opponents and critics are saying.” 

Kudlow added: “About $75 trillion is the total cost of the Green New Deal and its associated policies.”

He called for Americans to be armed with facts. 

“Tax the rich. Tax wealth. Wealthy, successful people don’t pay their fair share,” Kudlow said, echoing the left’s arguments. 

“The top 1 percent of income earners pay about 40 percent of taxes,” he said, ticking off some facts. “The top 10 percent pays nearly 70 percent. The bottom 50 percent pays 3 percent. So, who pays the taxes? Successful people.”

“So don’t let this ‘tax fairness’ debate go by,” Kudlow urged his audience. “Use the numbers.”

CPAC, the largest annual national gathering of conservative activists, runs through Saturday at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, just outside Washington.

COLUMN BY

Portrait of Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Send an email to Fred. Twitter: @FredLucasWH.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column with images is republished with permission. The featured image of Karl Marx is by Wikimedia Commons.

Facebook Employee: He ran away from me on his bike . . .

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WATCH
James O’Keefe in California. Photo: Screen shot.

Yesterday, Veritas published documents from a brave former Facebook insider which show how conservatives’ pages are targeted and “deboosted.”  These documents also reveal plans to suppress distribution, and they appear to conflate conservative speech with abusive “troll behavior.”

When Facebook commented on our investigations, they didn’t refute our documents, instead, they attacked our insider.  And when they tried to reject our conclusions, they contradicted themselves. 

Facebook told The Verge that their ActionDeboostLiveDistribution tag is used to “deboost” content uploaded through the API as live content that is not actually live content. 

Veritas has learned from people on the inside of Facebook that SIGMA: ActionDeboostLiveDistribution was created for the purpose of ferreting out suicide and self-injury content. 

So which is it?  

How has this tool been used for political purposes?

And when it happens — why aren’t users being notified? 

I figured Veritas should ask the people behind these documents to explain themselves, so I took a trip to California.

When I questioned two of these Facebook employees about their actions, well — take a look for yourself . . . 

They were so shocked that a journalist is trying to hold a tech giant accountable that one of them said:

 “I’m a little worried for my safety given the way that you’re stalking me.”

The irony!

What about how our brave insider feels? 

She has been attacked and ridiculed by one of the most powerful companies in the world.  Facebook, which has billions of daily users — now has her in their crosshairs.

At any rate, after asking more questions of him, the Facebook employee got so upset he got on his bike and quickly peddled away!

Click HERE to watch. 

In Truth, 

James O’Keefe

EDITORS NOTE: This Project Veritas column with video and images is republished with permission. The featured image is by geralt from Pixabay.

Congress Orders ‘Shields Down’ by Blocking Emergency Declaration

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It has been said that “Timing is everything.”

On February 26, 2019 the House of Representatives voted to block President Trump’s declaration of an emergency on the southern border.  Nancy Pelosi and others claimed that the declaration was a violation of the Separation of Powers provisions of the Constitution.

It would appear that failures to secure our nation’s borders against the entry of massive numbers of illegal aliens is a clear violation of our Constitution.

Article IV, Section 4 states:

“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.”

Invasion is defined, part as:

An incursion by a large number of people or things into a place or sphere of activity:  an unwelcome intrusion into another’s domain.

Furthermore, there would have been no need for any additional action by the administration if Congress had simply voted to fund the construction of a barrier to protect our nation from the illegal and un-inspected entry of people and contraband including narcotics and weapons, into the United States.

Congress failed to act responsibly and in accordance with the oaths of office that each member took to support and defend the Constitution of the United States by preventing invasion and domestic violence.

The media was quick to pick up on the Congressional response to the President’s action to fund the construction of a barrier to protect the vulnerable and highly porous U.S./Mexican border.

On February 26, 2019 Mass Live reported, “Mass. Democrats vote to block President Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration.”  Of course it was not just Massachusetts Democrats who voted against the declaration, but the comments in the article are worth considering.

Also on February 26th, the New York Times reported, “House Votes to Block Trump’s National Emergency Declaration About the Border.”

The action by Congress was not the only story making headlines, on February 26, 2019, however.

On that same day, that the Democrats and some Republicans in the House of Representatives voted against the Presidential declaration of emergency, ABC News reported, “26 years ago: 6 die in 1993 World Trade Center bombing.”

Finally, on February 26, 2019 the Washington Post reported, “Again, 9/11 first responders are pleading with Congress to fund their health care. Again, Jon Stewart is joining them.”

If we were to play the game of “connect the dots,” there is a common thread that connects these news reports: the issue of national security and the threats posed to America and Americans by terrorism and the consequences of failures of the immigration system that enabled foreign terrorists to enter the United States and carry out deadly terror attacks in 1993 and again in September 11, 2001.

While a barrier on the U.S./Mexican border wouldn’t, by itself solve the immigration crisis, it is a vital element of what must be a multi-pronged approach to secure our nation and protect our citizens.

After the attacks of 9/11, politicians from both parties demanded to know, “Why weren’t the dots connected?”

Since the attacks of September 11, 2001 the dots have been repeatedly connected, all too often in the wake of additional deadly terror attacks conducted by alien terrorists who easily gained entry into the United States by a variety of means.

Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the leader of the extremely violent Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel was just convicted of smuggling huge quantities of narcotics into the United States across the U.S./Mexican border.  His organization is responsible for numerous murders and crimes of violence and corruption.

There have been a long list of Congressional hearings and official government reports that warn that among the numerous threats that the U.S. faces around the world, many of those threats emanate from Latin America.

On January 29, 2019 the Senate Intelligence Committee conducted a hearing on Worldwide Threats that was predicated on a just-released paper, “World-Wide Threat Assessment,” that was issued by Daniel Coats, the Director of the Office of National Intelligence, which oversees the U.S. intelligence community.

Here is an excerpt from that report:

Transnational Organized Crime

Global transnational criminal organizations and networks will threaten US interests and allies by trafficking drugs, exerting malign influence in weak states, threatening critical infrastructure, orchestrating human trafficking, and undermining legitimate economic activity.

Drug Trafficking

The foreign drug threat will pose continued risks to US public health and safety and will present a range of threats to US national security interests in the coming year. Violent Mexican traffickers, such as members of the Sinaloa Cartel and New Generation Jalisco Cartel, remain key to the movement of illicit drugs to the United States, including heroin, methamphetamine, fentanyl, and cannabis from Mexico, as well as cocaine from Colombia. Chinese synthetic drug suppliers dominate US-bound movements of so- called designer drugs, including synthetic marijuana, and probably ship the majority of US fentanyl, when adjusted for purity.

Approximately 70,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2017, a record high and a 10-percent increase from 2016, although the rate of growth probably slowed in early 2018, based on Centers for Disease Control (CDC) data.

Increased drug fatalities are largely a consequence of surging production of the synthetic opioid fentanyl; in 2017, more than 28,000 Americans died from synthetic opioids other than methadone, including illicitly manufactured fentanyl. The CDC reports synthetic opioid- related deaths rose 846 percent between 2010 and 2017, while DHS reports that US seizures of the drug increased 313 percent from 2016 to 2017.

Other Organized Crime Activities

Transnational criminal organizations and their affiliates are likely to expand their influence over some weak states, collaborate with US adversaries, and possibly threaten critical infrastructure.

Mexican criminals use bribery, intimidation, and violence to protect their drug trafficking, kidnapping-for-ransom, fuel-theft, gunrunning, extortion, and alien-smuggling enterprises.

Gangs based in Central America, such as MS-13, continue to direct some criminal activities beyond the region, including in the United States.

Transnational organized crime almost certainly will continue to inflict human suffering, deplete natural resources, degrade fragile ecosystems, drive migration, and drain income from the productive—and taxable—economy.

Human trafficking generates an estimated $150 billion annually for illicit actors and governments that engage in forced labor, according to the UN’s International Labor Organization.

The first paragraph of the preface of the official report,  9/11 and Terrorist Travel, will provide my “closing argument” against the Congressional betrayal that America is now witnessing:

It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Indeed, even after 19 hijackers demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy. We believe, for reasons we discuss in the following pages, that it must be made one.

RELATED ARTICLES:

German Intelligence Warns of “Extremely Brutal” Nigerian Mafia in Germany as Fake Refugee Invasion Continues

2 Republican Senators Join with Democrats in Attempt To Halt Trump’s Emergency Declaration

Gaffney on America’s Porous Southern Border: “The reality is, it is an emergency and the president is absolutely right to declare it as such”

EDITORS NOTE: This FrontPage Magazine column with images is republished with permission.

Trayvon Martin Hate Hoax Created Modern Identity Politics

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The final take-away from what follows is that America is a pretty frickin’ amazing country when it comes to racism and bigotry.

It’s so good, in fact, that a small but booming industry has sprung up creating hoaxes to perpetuate the illusion of a bigoted country when the fact that there are so many hoaxes is one of the strong proofs of how little there is in reality.

The Jussie Smollett hate crime hoax — he paid Nigerians to pretend to attack him, pour bleach on him and put a noose around his neck — is just the latest. It follows in a long line of hate crime hoaxes being perpetrated by the left, Democrats and the media, but I repeat myself, creating an industry that was super fueled by the Trayvon Martin race hoax.

But Trayvon was only the start. Fuel was added in Ferguson, Baltimore and elsewhere. And all of the straight up hoaxes or race-baiting misrepresentations and grew into wildfires with the belching bellows of a credulous, fellow-traveling media.

This running annual survey by Gallup Poll on race relations shows the damage done by a series of hate crime hoaxes starting in 2013.

What happened in 2013? It’s what happened in 2012 that led to 2013. George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, after Martin attacked him and knocked him to the ground. It was self defense. That was the initial State’s Attorney decision after interviews with witnesses and examining all of the physical evidence. No charges.

But 2012, you may recall, was an election year. Barack Obama was in the midst of his re-election campaign and had already shown himself more than willing to stoke racial tensions — both purposely and incidentally — for his own purposes. The national media, and we all understand they are aligned with Democratic politicians and were major allies of Obama, ginned up the story of outrage that a white man had killed a young black teen in cold blood and was walking away scot free. Pictures of Trayvon in the media were from when he was 13 and pretty young and innocent looking.

The problem was that Trayvon was 18 and a filled out man. His social media accounts showed a full-size young man brooding in a hoodie or giving us all the finger — pictures the media refused to run, sticking with the five-year-old photo of a skinny kid. The other problem: Zimmerman was not white. He was Hispanic.

The photo the media ran most often:

Photos of the young man who actually attacked Zimmerman:

No matter. The narrative was set. This is not to say it was OK to shoot him because of the photos. His actions apparently dictated that.

It is to say that the media was particularly egregious on this hoax, actively participating in it. Beyond just absurd credulity and using the wrong photo, CNN and NBC News were both caught manipulating Zimmerman’s 911 tape to twist him into a racist by badly taking things out of context and warping some of the words. ABC News actually airbrushed a photo of Zimmerman’s bloodied scalp to remove the wounds he received from Martin.

The narrative whipping up the public, prosecutors ended up charging Zimmerman with murder — a wild overreach that was doomed from the beginning. It went to trial and Zimmerman was duly acquitted after a full-fledged circus because while the race-inflaming industry had changed the narrative and the charges, the evidence itself had not changed.

But the damage was done. Florida was branded again as racist. America was racist. Black men were being gunned down on the streets. And the racial tensions that had been finally healing were cut back open again because it benefitted Obama and the Democratic, race-hustling machine let by Al Sharpton and the NAACP.

Gallup’s poll showed a plunge in American attitudes on race relations the following year when it was taken. All based on a hate crime hoax.

It got worse. In 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri, a black community, part of the St. Louis metro area, a black teen named Michael Brown was shot by a white cop and killed, his body laying in the street until paramedics arrived. The race-baiting industry, led by the media megaphone portion, went into high gear, including reporting that Brown had put his hands up and said don’t shoot. “Hands up don’t shoot” became the mantra of activists and many in the media. Riots ensued. The police officer went into hiding and Black Lives Matter was birthed.

But this too was a hate crime hoax. It turns out, when the investigation was done and all the evidence in, even Obama’s race-driven Justice Department found no cause against the police officer because “hands up don’t shoot” never happened. What actually took place was that Brown, always called a teen despite being a nearly 300-pound 19-year-old man, had just robbed a Korean grocery store and threatened the owner. It’s on tape.

When the officer responding to the call saw him walking down the street, he told him to stop. Brown ultimately ended up attacking the officer, punched him in the face and tried to take his gun. The officer shot Brown multiple times and killed him. There’s no disputing this as even Obama’s team had to admit this is what happened.

But the burning, looting and rioting that resulted from the irresponsible (at best) media hoax reporting had done more damage to American race relations. In 2014 and 2015, Gallup’s poll fell further. It leveled out at a much worse place by 2016 and has actually stayed steady at that point through 2018. So six years ago, the number of blacks who thought race relations between blacks and white was bad nearly doubled, from 29 percent in 2012 to 53 percent by 2015. It actually dropped a little by 2018 to 47 percent, but still very high. Whites track that trajectory.   

Hoax hate crimes are nothing really new. They’ve been used to further the left’s agenda for decades. In 1987, Al Sharpton created the Tawana Brawley hoax, which claimed that four white men raped a black girl. It never happened, it finally came out. But riots and at least one actual death stemmed from the hoax.

Sharpton has been well-rewarded for lying and creating hysteria over the hoax. He got national recognition and displaced Jesse Jackson as the ultimate race hustler. He made millions of dollars, was given a television show, a talk radio show and even ran for president in 2004. Oh, and he was invited to Obama’s White House 82 times — to advise on matters of race. Frankly, it appears Obama took his advice.

The Daily Caller has compiled a list of 21 of the most egregious hate crime hoaxes just during the Trump administration. (Other sites have the total, including small ones, at nearly 400.) There are many more, but these are a few that stand out. They range from racist hate crime hoaxes to anti-gay hate crime hoaxes to anti-Muslim hate crime hoaxes. Basically, the full panoply of the left.

Note, that these all disappeared from the news immediately upon being determined by authorities to be hoaxes. But the media continues to jump on the next one. Remember way back to the Covington school boys hate crime hoax, before the Jussie Smollett hate crime hoax?

Of course, unless you file a false police report, and the police decide to actually charge you with that — there is no downside to hoaxing and a lot of upside potential. The cost-benefit analysis for the hoaxer is very positive.

There will be more, and the media will leap to believe them. And American race relations and divisions will either remain bad or get deeper.

Wait, here’s one new hot off the presses. Two days ago, The Detroit Free Press reported that a transgender, gay-rights activist who had fought for a local anti-discrimination ordinance in Jackson, Michigan, and had his house burned down in 2017, blamed haters, was just charged with arson for setting the fire himself. It’s like clockwork.

Notice that the hate crime hoaxes are not just regarding blacks, although they are an important part of intersectional politics of the left. It is also gays, Muslims and so on. This has helped fuel intersectional politics, continuing the broad hoax that America is a racist, bigoted place.

The really ironic part is that progressive Democrats have to continually keep making up these hoaxes, because there is so little racism and bigotry left in the United States. Yet the perceptions are wildly different. We know why, and we know who benefits.

EDITORS NOTE: This Revolutionary Act column with images is republished with permission. The featured image is by
jorgophotography on Pixabay.